Orville Frank Tuttle

Orville Frank Tuttle, called Frank Tuttle was an American mineralogist, geochemist and petrographer. He was a pioneer in the development of apparatus in experimental petrography.

After graduating from high school in Smethport, Pennsylvania, he worked on oil fields and studied geology at the Pennsylvania State College with the bachelor's degree in 1939 and the master's degree in 1940. After that, he studied for the doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, World war in which he was engaged in war-bearing research (crystal cultivation and characterization).

In 1948 he was promoted to MIT. In 1947 his collaboration with Norman L. Bowen began at the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution in Washington in experimental petrography. There he invented the Tuttle Press and the Tuttle Bomb (a high-pressure chamber), which was widely used in experimental petrography. Together with Bowen he explored the formation of granite in particular.

In 1953 he became professor for geochemistry at Pennsylvania State University. In 1959 he became dean of the College of Mineral Industries. In 1960 he was diagnosed with early Parkinson's disease. In 1965 he moved to Stanford University, where, however, he had already been on leave for medical reasons in 1967 and formally resigned in 1971. He moved to Tucson with his wife. In 1977 he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and moved to a nursing home and died on December 13, 1983.

In 1952 he received the Mineralogical Society of America Award, 1975 the Roebling Medal and 1967 the Arthur L. Day Medal. He was a member of the Geological Society of London and from 1968 a member of the National Academy of Sciences.